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The door to Levi’s room was half open, though the room was dark. Hanji knocked softly. “Levi?” they asked.
He let out a labored breath. Everything hurt. The aches were deep in his bones, and he was either too warm or too cold. Fevers broke and subsided too many times to count. Travel was necessary— if there were ever a time to keep moving, it was now— but it wasn’t helping his condition. Levi wasn’t young anymore. Nor had he ever sustained such severe injuries. He should have died.
“You awake?" Hanji whispered into the darkness.
“Yeah,” Levi said. He winced as pain shot across his face. It was always a toss up with speaking. Sometimes it cost him, sometimes it didn’t.
Hanji closed the door behind them and crawled into bed, because it wasn’t Levi’s room, really. Nor was it just Levi’s bed. They could hardly remember how it started, the sleeping in the same bed— it’d been years, at this point. Sometime after Shiganshina, the near-obliteration of the Survey Corps, Hanji and Levi had started sharing a bed. They’d both seen terrible casualties, friends devoured by titans, corpses of people they’d talked to only hours earlier in the day. But what had been different with all of those times was that there’d always been a Survey Corps to return to. A grounding, a carrying on with who was still left. Even when their numbers dwindled, there had never been so few of them. And neither Hanji nor Levi wanted to crack in front of the children. (Levi didn’t want to crack at all. Hanji accepted that there would be times they would.) Though the surviving members of the 104th were approaching their twenties now, an unshakable guardianship had always been counted among Hanji and Levi’s duties. Not that they could always carry out their duties well. But that was life in the Survey Corps, certain things were always beyond anticipation.
“Careful,” Levi muttered as Hanji curled up beside him.
“I know,” Hanji said. They reached for his bandaged hand.
“You’d get better sleep—“ Pain cut across Levi’s face again, and he gritted his teeth. “Elsewhere.”
Hanji said nothing. Levi was thinking he was a pain to sleep next to, and his sleep, when his body allowed it, was far from peaceful. But Hanji didn’t care for sleeping alone. Besides wanting to be available, should Levi be in immediate need of anything, the dreams were always worse when they had to sleep alone. Hanji squeezed Levi’s hand gently. They brought their arm up, resting their hand on the left side of his chest.
“You know your heart is about this big?” they asked, curling their hand into a fist where it rested, right above his heart.
“Got its work cut out for it,” Levi muttered. He brought his hand up to their fist.
“Levi,” Hanji said. Their tone was softer.
Don’t. They had laid in the dark next to one another for hundreds— no, it had to be over a thousand— nights now. And they’d never… Levi didn’t see why now. It could be just what it was, that was okay for him. That was more than enough. He’d hardly thought of something like that spoken aloud. Not for years now. It was a different sort of simple luxury, one he couldn’t allow himself.
“Hanji,” he whispered hoarsely. He could feel their chest convulse with a small chuckle.
“Why not?” Hanji asked.
Levi didn’t answer.
“Damn it,” they muttered. “Levi, you’re holding my hand to your heart. And you can’t say anything?”
He could say so many things. So many stupidly simple, useless things. So many things that he should have said years ago, when his only concern would’ve been embarrassment. “What… “ he began, anticipating pain to shoot across his face, but none came. “What would be… enough?”
“Oh,” Hanji said, their voice small. They’d been ready for outright denial, to run into some sort of wall, but not this.
“Did you want some big confession?”
“No,” Hanji said, resting their head in the crook of his neck. “I wanted… to know. And for you to know. With words.”
Levi was silent for a moment. He squeezed their hand as best he could with three fingers. “Hey, four-eyes,” he said.
“Hmm?”
“I love you.”
He felt Hanji’s body tense up. “I love you,” they said, the words barely audible.
Neither of them said anything else. Hanji opened their fist, placing their hand palm-down over his heart. Levi held their hand there. He could feel his heart beat with his whole body.
Sleep came easier to both of them than it had in years.
Damn it, four-eyes.
Levi wondered if they had known. Not that anyone could’ve predicted they’d run right up against the clock in this exact way, but if something buried deep in their subconscious had pushed them to speak the night before.
“Armin Arlert,” Hanji said. “I hereby appoint you as the fifteenth commander of the Survey Corps.”
Blood roared in Levi’s ears. The ground shook beneath them. He didn’t catch the rest of what they said. Hanji turned and started walking in his direction.
“Hey,” he said. “Four-eyes.” Hanji walked up to him. They didn’t face him directly. Maybe their body couldn’t bring them to do so. Levi dropped his gaze.
“You know, don’t you, Levi?” they said. “My time has come. I want to go out with a bang.” The next words tumbled out of their mouth quickly, as though Hanji couldn’t get them out fast enough. “So, please let me go.”
Levi stared straight ahead. If he met their gaze, he didn’t know what he would say. Damn it, four-eyes. He balled his left hand into a fist and placed it on their chest. Above their heart, just as they had done to him, in the dark. Now, in the daylight, their heart was pounding.
“Devote your heart,” he said.
Hanji tensed up for a moment, then laughed. It was a horrible sound to Levi, as he realized it was the last time—
“I’ve never heard you say that before,” Hanji said. Levi heard the wire shoot from their 3DMG, and then they were gone.
Getting onto the plane was a blur. Hanji felled two colossal titans before the crew signaled that fueling was done. Mikasa and Armin, or maybe it had been Connie— he wasn’t paying attention— guided Levi onto the plane.
They were all so loud, looking back at the colossals. Pounding on the walls of the plane, screaming for Hanji to come back. Levi sat, unable to move, as the plane rose higher in the sky.
“Later, Hanji,” he murmured. “Watch us from there.”